Nine high-performing charities to consider this Giving Season
Your climate donations achieve the biggest impact if you follow the recommendations by charity evaluators.
Today is Giving Tuesday: a day on which many people contribute to a better world by donating to charities.
Effective environmentalism is about making the largest possible contribution to tackling climate change and other environmental problems. That includes thinking about your career, but—for many in the movement—also donating to high-impact climate charities.
Climate charity evaluators save you from a big hassle: choosing charities. Evaluators find out out which climate non-profits will make the most progress on climate change for every dollar that they receive. The differences in impacts between charities can be multiple orders of magnitude, so choosing the right charity is important!
The two main climate change charity evaluators—Giving Green and Founders Pledge (FP)—have curated a list of top climate nonprofits that make exceptional progress in areas that are high in scale, relatively easy to address, and sorely overlooked by other organisations.1 We recommend following charity evaluators for your donations to ensure that your climate giving achieves maximum impact.
You can donate directly to the charities below, or let evaluators decide where your donations can make the biggest difference by donating directly to expert-led charitable funds:
Here are the top-ranked climate non-profits for Giving Season 2025:
The Clean Air Task Force (CATF) works to accelerate decarbonization by promoting policies and technologies across sectors such as zero‑carbon fuels, transportation, and super‑hot rock geothermal. Giving Green considers them a top nonprofit because of their strong track record in shaping impactful climate legislation and advancing low‑carbon technologies at both national and international levels. With additional funding, CATF would expand global advocacy, support emerging geothermal innovations, and push for stronger policy frameworks around zero‑carbon transport and fuels. Recommended by Founders Pledge and Giving Green.
Future Cleantech Architects (FCA) is a Germany‑based think tank focused on advancing early-stage clean technologies and policy innovation in hard‑to‑abate sectors like heavy industry, aviation, and firm renewable power. Giving Green ranks them highly due to their unique focus on underfunded innovation gaps and their growing influence in shaping EU climate policy. If given more resources, they would hire more technical experts to deepen their policy engagement, especially in industrial decarbonization and energy system transformation. Recommended by Founders Pledge and Giving Green.
The Good Food Institute (GFI) promotes plant‑based and cultivated meat alternatives as a strategy to reduce emissions from animal agriculture and transform the global food system. Giving Green recognizes them as a top nonprofit because of their cost‑effective approach in boosting R&D, supporting regulatory development, and scaling production of alternative proteins. Extra funding would enable GFI to expand international offices, issue more scientific grants, and increase policy efforts to unlock greater public investment in sustainable proteins. Recommended by Giving Green and the EcoResilience Initiative.
Opportunity Green is a UK nonprofit leveraging law, economics, and policy to fill global climate governance gaps, initially targeting aviation and shipping emissions. Giving Green includes them among top nonprofits due to their focus on under-addressed international sectors and their innovative use of legal tools and climate justice frameworks. Additional funding would allow them to build out new campaigns, forge stronger partnerships, and expand their efforts into other high-impact sectors like buildings, agriculture, and steel. Recommended by Giving Green.
Project InnerSpace is working to rapidly scale geothermal energy by mapping global subsurface resources (GeoMap), investing in early-stage ventures (GeoFund), and advocating for supportive policy. Giving Green selected them as one of the most impactful climate nonprofits because of their high potential to unlock zero‑carbon electricity and heat at scale. With increased financial support, they would accelerate global GeoMap development, grow the GeoFund, convene stakeholders, and support policy and startup incubation activities. Recommended by Giving Green.
DEPLOY/US works to build the neglected field of engaging conservative constituencies in the United States on climate and energy. Less than 1% of US climate philanthropy has supported organisations working on right-of-centre climate action, despite the necessity of engaging conservatives on this issue now that Republicans hold both chambers of congress and the presidency. Recommended by Founders Pledge.
Innovation Initiative (I2) is a vehicle of the Clean Economy Project that identifies and advances high-impact policy interventions to accelerate clean energy innovation in the United States. By targeting overlooked opportunities for systemic change - such as regulatory reforms and incentive structures that unlock cleaner markets - I2 helps shape the policies that drive large-scale emissions reductions. With additional funding, I2 can expand its policy research, coalition-building, and advocacy efforts to move promising ideas from concept to implementation. Recommended by Founders Pledge.
WePlanet is a global pro-science NGO advancing scalable, evidence-based solutions to the climate and biodiversity crises — often where traditional green groups resist change. Active in 18 countries, WePlanet has helped secure landmark policy wins for nuclear energy, gene editing, and alternative proteins, and is now also applying its proven advocacy model to emerging priorities such as geoengineering and clean cooking in Africa. Working alongside Nobel laureates, presidents, thought leaders, and hundreds of thousands of citizen supporters, WePlanet is building the data-driven environmental movement needed to replace the legacy NGOs and deliver impact at speed and scale. Recommended by Founders Pledge.
Repower CIC is a global non-profit initiative accelerating the clean repowering of coal-fired power plants (CFPPs) — replacing coal boilers with low-carbon energy sources while retaining existing infrastructure and jobs. If widely adopted, clean repowering could avert up to 200 gigatons of CO₂ emissions by 2070, while lowering the cost and improving the permitting prospects of new clean generation. With a focus on China, India, South Korea, and Indonesia, we target the regions where coal transition is both most urgent and impactful. Additional funding will allow us to deepen engagement with key decision makers and convert awareness into concrete repowering projects. Recommended by Founders Pledge.
(This list is in no particular order.)
Your donations can catalyze the next climate breakthroughs we need to make renewables work everywhere, transform food systems, and push fossil fuels off the grid. Thank you for your generous contributions to climate progress!
Disclosure: The newsletter author works for Giving Green. This newsletter is editorially independent.
We are grateful to contributions from Founders Pledge for writing the blurbs about some of the non-profits included in this newsletter.
This is a special edition of the effective environmentalism newsletter. We’re back soon with our regular newsletter with interesting takes on effective climate action.